The daily and not so daily ramblings of my life, creativity, relationship with my husband and the rest of the world.
Warning: This is about my whole life, real and fantasy, and may contain adult content. Read at your own risk.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

"Jigsaw Puzzle Girl" Chapter 4: Uncertainty

The
drive was beautiful and once they got to the coast they headed south.The little hotel was on a high bluff
overlooking the ocean.David had gotten
a kitchenette suite, with view of the ocean, a fire place and a huge master
bedroom with a big Jacuzzi bathtub in the bathroom.There was a window by the tub so you could
soak and look out over the sea.

To
Monica’s surprise he insisted on carrying her in over the threshold again.When she looked at him in surprise, he smiled
and muttered something about how little she was and easy to pick up.

They
went to a little grocery store and picked up some things to cook for dinners.Monica warned, “I am not much of a cook.Mostly cold cereal, canned food and frozen
dinners.”

David
laughed, “Didn’t Junie teach you anything?”

“She
taught me how to bake bread.But to tell
you the truth, Junie doesn’t let other people do much in her kitchen.She just likes you to watch and eat.And they ate so much organic, um… vegetable
type stuff.”Monica wrinkled her nose up
a little, “I mean I like salads but they ate squash and eggplant type stuff.”

David
laughed, “Well, I will do the cooking and I tend toward pretty simple
stuff.I usually make beans and
tortillas with almost everything I cook.Do you like spicy food?”

Monica
blinked and shook her head.“Not
much.I like Mexican food, but not if it
is too hot.”

“Okay,
I will bring down the heat a few notches then.One thing you will need to learn how to cook is grits.I can’t bring a girl home to meet the family
that can’t cook grits.They will think I
have totally lost my mind.”

“What
are grits?”

“Oh
good lord, girl, you have a lot to learn!”But his words were accompanied with a big grin and a hug.“I did not marry you for your cooking.But let’s not worry about cooking today.Let’s plan on eating out tonight and then we
can start playing house tomorrow morning.I will give you your first lesson in cooking grits in the morning.”

They
put their groceries away and even though there was a light rain falling Monica
begged to go down to the beach.They
worked their way down a long steep series of switch backing stairs to a rocky
beach.The sky was low and a steady wind
blew a fine misty rain against their faces.They walked huddled closely together as they walked, David’s arm wrapped
possessively around her shoulders and her arm tight around his waist.The ocean waves crashed and roared, making
conversation difficult and they found themselves communicating with gestures,
touches and looks more than words.

Monica
was damp and shivering when they got back to their hotel room and she hung her
wet coat up to dry and bent over to take off her shoes.She pushed her wet hair back out of her face
and her voice quaked with her shaking, “I guess it was a little silly to go
down and get soaked first thing.”

David’s
hands on her were warm and strong as he propelled her into the bathroom.“There is no avoiding getting wet in this
part of the world.Take a warm bath.”He started the bath filling.Monica nervously raised her hands to buttons
on her blouse and then turned her back on him as she slipped it from her
shoulders.She looked up saw his
reflection in the mirror.He was looking
down at her, frozen for a second and then to her surprise, she saw him blush
and look away.

Somehow
his reticence emboldened her and she turned to face him, standing in her wet
jeans and a small white brassiere.She
looked down at her body, frowning a little, she had gained a little weight but
she was still painfully thin and the scars running up her belly and chest
seemed to pull at her eyes.Long white
lines tracing vertical paths that ran up her body, over her breasts, some
reaching up as high as her throat, the tracks of the knife were a permanent
reminder of assault.She knew that the
scars continued lower, running down her legs.All the scars converged on her sex.The man who had assaulted her, she hardly ever thought his name out loud
in her head, had not ever had sex with her, instead using his knife as some
kind of surrogate penis to rape her.It
had taken almost a year of surgeries and recovery to find some semblance of
normalcy.

Monica
shuddered and shook her head trying to clear away the memories that were making
her feel cold and numb again.Wordlessly
she held out her hands to David, pleading with her eyes to be held, for his
touch to push these images from her head but he seemed frozen and then mumbled
something about giving her some privacy, and backed out of the bathroom.

Mechanically,
Monica poured some foaming bath oil into the bathtub and stripped off the rest
of the way and carefully not looking at her body, climbed in, grateful for the
bubbles that hid her scars from her own eyes.

She
carefully wrapped a towel around her body when she went to change into dry
clothes but David was not in the bedroom.He was sitting in the living room working on his laptop computer, when
she came out.He looked up and smiled,
“All warm?”

Monica
nodded and tried to meet his smile but somehow the lightness that had started
their day had evaporated and once more she found her lips quivering as they
tried to hold the smile.She turned and
looked out the big window at the rain and gray ocean waves, letting the smile
falter and fade as she hid her face from him, “What are you working on?”

“Just
a couple of things, checking my email and getting started on one of those
reports that I need to file to wrap up this whole case and put it to bed.”His voice was distracted.

“Don’t
let me bother you.I will go watch TV in
the bedroom.”Somehow Monica felt like
hiding, there was a growing sense of loss and failure as she could not
recapture the giddy silly mood that had set the tone for the first part of the
day.She curled up on the big king sized
bed and turned on the television, searching around until she found an old Perry
Mason rerun and let her mind go numb.

She
was startled when she felt him shaking her awake.His hand was on her ankle and she jerked and
screamed, fighting for a second until he released her and then scrambling away
from him.She huddled there for a
second, shuddering and gasping, blinking at him like she didn’t quite recognize
him.David had stepped back and was
speaking softly but for some reason she could not quite hear his words, somehow
they were just the same as the muffled comments and questions that the man had
spoken as he had hurt her.

Then
she forced herself to wake up, consciously pushing away the flashback like she
had learned to do so many months ago.She forced herself to take one deep slow breath and then another,
looking around the room, and then stopping and drinking in David standing there
looking concerned and trying to reassure her.Finally she could hear his words, his soft southern drawl, and she held
out her hands to him.Her voice still
vibrated with the echoes of the terror that rebounded around inside her, “Hold
me.I need to feel your arms around me.”

David
nodded and carefully sat on the edge of the bed and gathered her into his
arms.Monica wrapped her arms around him
and held tightly until all the shudders of fear finally went away.She swallowed and forced her voice to sound
light and cheerful, “Next time don’t grab my foot like that.It was too much like the way the rope
felt.”

“Are
you okay?”

“I
will be.I haven’t had a flash back like
that in a while.”

His
voice was soft, “I’m sorry.I just
wanted to wake you up so we could go to dinner.”

“It’s
okay.”She wiped the last of the tears
from her face.“What time is it?”

“After
seven.”

“Oh
my, I bet you are starved.”

“I
had a beer.It took some of the edge
off.But I am hungry.”

Monica
extricated herself from his embrace and scooted off the bed and hurried into
the bathroom.She quickly peed and
pulled a hairbrush through her hair.Her
hair had dried while she slept and stubbornly refused to lay flat and she kept
running water on the brush trying to tame it and make it lay down.Finally she made an exasperated sound and
went out to pull on her dry pair of shoes.She tried to joke, “I slept on my hair and I can’t do a thing with
it.”

David’s
voice was soft and gentle, “You look fine.There is a little sea food restaurant not far back on the road.It looked pretty informal.”

Monica
nervously ran her hand over her damp hair, feeling it trembling a little, and
fought the impulse to beg not to go.She
shrugged, telling herself that her nerves were just a side product of the
flashback.It always had taken the
adrenaline a while to fade completely away.She still was a little disoriented from taking such a long nap and then
waking so abruptly.She pulled on her
still damp jacket and shivered when the cold fabric touched her hand.As they walked to the Cadillac, the wind was
howling and she could hear the crash of the surf far below.It had stopped raining and she could see the
crescent moon peek briefly through a tear in the clouds but it was gone before
she could point it out to David.

There
weren’t a lot of people in the restaurant and David asked for a table close to
the fire place rather than the windows.Monica
ordered a shrimp cocktail and a bowl of clam chowder and David got a bowl of
Cioppino, with a side order of fried oysters.He asked for a bottle of hot sauce and seemed pleased that they had a
variety to choose from. When he ordered a beer, on impulse Monica ordered a
glass of Chardonnay.The waitress looked
at her skeptically and asked for ID.Monica blushed and dug out her old driver’s license.David was looking bemused and when she shot
him an embarrassed look, he chuckled, “Oh they are so going to call me a cradle
robber aren’t they?My wife gets carded
when she orders wine.”

Monica
grumbled, “It happens all the time.”

The
waitress served David’s oysters when she brought Monica’s shrimp cocktail.He offered her one to try but Monica took one
bite and made a face at the texture.She
forced herself to swallow the one bite and discretely put the uneaten portion
back on his plate.David picked up the
half eaten oyster and shook some hot sauce onto it and popped it into his mouth.“Didn’t like it?”

“Not
really.It was kind of mushy inside.”

“They
taste good though.”

“Then
why do you drown them in hot sauce?”

David
grinned and spoke with a full mouth, “You got me there.”

Monica’s
clam chowder was good and she watched in amusement as David added a generous
amount of hot sauce to his Cioppino.The
restaurant kept their bread basket filled with hot crusty French bread and
Monica used it to dip up her soup.She
sipped her wine and found that she could feel the effects of the alcohol easing
some of her tension.

After
dinner David asked cautiously, “Do you very often have flash backs?”

Monica
paused and shook her head.“No, that was
the first one in a couple of months.I
used to get them all the time.It seemed
like little things would trigger them, a sound or a smell, the pain from my
surgeries, being restrained, the smell of blood, or having blankets over my
face.”She swallowed the last sip of
wine from her glass and looked into it.“My therapist taught me how to breathe and look around at where I was really, to force myself to realize that
my mind was playing tricks on me.It
still takes a while to get my body to calm down after my mind realizes
everything is okay.”She shrugged and
looked up at him apologetically, “I’m sorry I screamed at you.”

“That
did sort of take me off guard.”

“It
was nice to have you hold me while my body calmed down.”She looked up warningly, “But don’t touch me
until I ask for it.If I am still in it,
it would just make it worse.First my
head has to wake up.One time my Mom
decided to try and shake me and it was horrible.”

“What
does help?”

“Talking
doesn’t help, for some reason I can’t hear then, but make sure that the lights
are on.I use my eyes more than the rest
of my senses.For some reason, it’s all
hearing, sensation, and smell.It’s
looking around at where I really am and who you really are that is the biggest
help.”

David
watched her toying with her empty wine glass, “Do you want another glass of
wine, or maybe something else to drink?”

“No
thank you.I am not much of a
drinker.It doesn’t take much to make me
a little tipsy.”

David’s
eyes looked puzzled and he blinked at her change of tone, “Pretty Girl, I don’t
know what you mean.I always like
looking at you.”

Monica’s
words were soft but her lips were stiff, she looked down at her hands, “Today
in the bathroom, you wouldn’t.You were
looking at my back and then I turned around and you saw the scars and… and…”She couldn’t finish the sentence.

David
looked around the quiet little restaurant and stood up abruptly, “This is not
the place to talk about this.Let’s go
home.”

She
let him help her put her coat on but her body was tense and rigid when he put
his arm around her.She did not speak as
they drove home.At the hotel David
turned on the gas fireplace and then sat on the couch and patted the seat
beside him, “Okay, come sit.I deserve a
chance to defend myself.”

When
she sat looking into the flames, she felt his hands on her shoulders, turning
her gently to face him, “Ready to listen?”She nodded and nervously pushed her hair out of her eyes.David gently took her hand in his and then
touched her hair himself, idly playing with the fine blond strands.“Pretty girl, you were right I did look
away.I ran away like a coward.But I did not see any scars.I was looking at your breasts and thinking
about the rest of you.You were looking
very good to me, all wet and then you turned around with that look in your eye.I started to feel very much like rushing, a
very base part of me wanted to stop being gentle.”

Monica
froze and looked at him with startled eyes.“I didn’t realize.”

“Monica,
Pretty Girl, when I get those feelings, they make me angry at myself.It is kind of confusing.I want you.”His voice almost broke, “God knows, I want you.But it is a very primitive feeling and I get
to thinking I am not much better than the men I have pursued all my life.I start to feel like I could so easily become
an animal just like them.A better man
would be able to control himself.”

Monica
reached up and touched his lips, stilling his words.“David, I know I don’t know much, but I do
know you are not like them.You are a
good man.There is nothing wrong with
your wanting me.”She fought down the
urge to giggle, “In fact, I really like to hear that you want me.It helps me feel a lot better.Sometimes when I look at myself all I can see
is the scars; the fact you did not even see them is wonderful.I look at my body and all I see is the jigsaw
puzzle girl.”She started to gently
trace the edge of his lip with her finger, feeling the rough stubble of his
whiskers.“And sometimes I feel the
animal inside myself as well.It is not
bad.It is part of all of us.”

“I
am so afraid of hurting you, scaring you.”

“If
I get scared, it won’t be you.Today
when you woke me up, it wasn’t you.It
was just old memories.My therapist said
it is my brain's way of trying to figure it out, resolve it.She said a lot happened that I could not deal
with then, and it will take a long time for me to sort it all out.And if something hurts I will tell you and we
will figure out what to do about it.My
doctor seems pretty confident that he has me put together right.He said just go slow and gentle at first.”

Slowly
Monica crept into his lap and put her arms around his neck and whispered,
“Perhaps you could practice remembering kisses.”She gently pressed her lips to his.

To
Monica’s frustration, it seemed like her spirit was willing but her body was
not going along for the ride.Her heart
did not race, her body felt increasingly wooden and stiff instead of melting
gently against his.She found herself
analytically analyzing the physical sensations, the way his whiskers scraped
against her cheeks, the sound of his breath as it whistled through his
nostrils, the flavor of his saliva in her mouth.There was a growing sense of tension, almost
claustrophobic and eventually she pulled away with a soft little angry sigh.

His
voice was husky, “What is the matter?”

“I
don’t know.It just doesn’t feel right.”She could see the disappointment in his eyes,
“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t
be sorry, Pretty Girl.”He stroked her
hair out of her face.“The kisses were
nice.”

“I
guess I was expecting more, trying to make it happen.”

“Are
you sleepy?”

“Not
really.”

“Let’s
crawl into bed and see what is on the television.”

Once
they were in the bedroom David looked a little uncertain and then asked, “I
think I will take a shower, unless you want to change in the bathroom
first?”

Monica
shrugged and bit her lip a little nervously, all her boldness gone, “You go
ahead.”

After
he disappeared behind the closed door she got into her bag and picked up the
new lavender silky nightgown.She held
it up and then shyly put it back into her bag, getting out the long sleeved,
knee-length white cotton one she had worn the night before and pulled it on
over one of her new cotton bikini panties.David seemed to take a long time in the shower and she found a channel
that was playing back to back M.A.S.H. reruns.She looked up when he came out of the bathroom wearing boxers and a
white cotton undershirt.

Monica
held up the remote control, “I couldn’t find much to watch.What kind of stuff do you like?”

David
slid under the covers and she inhaled the smell of aftershave and soap.“This is fine. I watch news, history, or science
programs.I like true crime shows but
hate fiction stuff, like CSI or other cop shows.”

No comments:

Post a Comment

xantu magic

Old enough to know better, young enough not to care. I am in a long term, heterosexual, monogamous, formerly total power exchange relationship with my husband. We are exploring where we go from here. I am a once published writer of erotic fetish fiction novels.